Tag: comments you can trust

If you have a great blog and are looking for ways to gain more followers and increase your user engagement, look no further! Here are 4 helpful tools to improve the ways you promote your blog. These range from small and simple to longer and more complex, so take a look and see which ideas inspire you.

Go beyond the blog

It might sound trivial, but your blog isn’t just your blog. One of your major aims when marketing is to increase traffic to your blog and this means improving the channels outside the immediate radius of your blog and most recent posts. Social media is one of the big places to do this. Are you on Facebook? Great! Twitter? Cool. What about Snapchat? Do you have a Pinterest account? While you don’t need to go completely mad with social media you should take some time to think about the different social media channels that are out there. If you’ve been hooked exclusively on Instagram for the past year then it might be worth diversifying your social media portfolio. Just keep in mind your target audience when you do this and pick the channels that suit them best.

Harness the right resources

A blog doesn’t have to be a one-person show. To make your blog the best it can be you will likely need some help. It is important to figure out which resources can give you the biggest bang for your buck and figure out what you really need most. You might be all set for content and need a professional photographer to get the great shots to make your blog visually stunning. Or maybe you need a web designer to give the whole blog a big overhaul. It’s important to figure out your budget and your goals and to bring on board skilled people who can really help to transform what you do.

Keep track of things

When you start investing, bringing new people on board and switching up the ways that you do things, keep a close eye on the result. Figuring out the right recipe for your blog means keeping your eye on the ball. It could be that the banner ad you paid for in a popular marketplace is getting you nothing while the email retargeting campaign you sent out is reengaging readers you lost long ago. Figuring out cause and effect will let you hone in on the tools that work best for you. And don’t stress if something doesn’t work as well as you thought it would, part of the process is about experimenting and figuring out the right combination. There is no secret recipe for success.

Get interactive

Blogging about the things that make you cry, the things you really care about or the things that keep you up and night are good, but it isn’t enough. Make sure that you are bringing your readers into the conversation by allowing your blog to have an interactive aspect. This is the difference between giving a lecture when everyone shuts up and listens and having a meaningful and open discussion where everyone learns and contributes. The latter can be far more valuable so figure out the best ways to facilitate it. It might be as easy as adding survey software to your blog or simple asking your readers to message you or comment about their thoughts.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

If you are running a business, and especially if that business has an online presence, it is crucial writing a blog. You might think that everyone has a blog and that their value has deteriorated now that millions of people are posting about trivia like their cat’s playing habits or their most recent breakfast. The truth is blogs are not just nice to have; they are now the must-have marketing tools of our generation. But if you are still not persuaded, here are a few reasons why they are so important.

Blogs drive traffic to your site

Driving traffic to your site means more users, and ultimately more conversions and purchases. Of course, there are many many different ways to do this. You can spend your marketing budget on banner ads and retargeting campaigns. However, this is very capital intensive and doesn’t guarantee high returns. Sharing content on social media is a great way to spread the word about what your business but it is important to have good content to share. Writing high-quality blogs is a way to organically generate content. It means that people will come to your site because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say. This also means they will be likely to stay on your site for longer. And finally, blogs mean you have better content to spread on your social networks.

Blogs improve your rankings

Search engines love blogs. Google’s constantly improving algorithms will rank you higher if you have original content. You are much more likely to turn up in someone’s search results if you have frequent blog posts. You can also cross-link to other websites and blogs through your own blog, which moves the search rankings even further in your favor. And finally, there are also a number of great SEO plugins that you can use, for example, blog platforms like WordPress offer SEO packages.

Blogs expand your horizons

Writing a series of content blogs makes you push through the easy and obvious subject matters and work to research and understand more about your business and industry. Writing a content series makes you really stop and think and also encourages you to seek out new information. It also keeps you up-to-date on the other blogs and news sites out there since one of the best ways to get inspired is to read up on your field in other blogs. But together with expanding your horizons, writing a frequent blog helps you to focus your marketing strategy since you need to plan topics and deadlines in advance.

Blogs give you a voice

In many ways, your branding comes down to the tone of voice. Your readers will notice the way your tone and the way you brand your business. And one way to really pin down the right tone of voice and convey your messages to your reader is through a blog. The magic of blogs is that they are a conversation, so as well as expressing your brand, blogs also empower your users and give them a voice. Every time a user writes a comment likes a blog or interacts with your contact, you are increasing your user engagement, decreasing bounce rates and very likely increasing your sales.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

It’s all well and good building an online presence, creating an amazing e-store or building a one-of-a-kind blog. But, how can you be unique? Being a force of inspiration is one way to really set yourself apart from the crowd and make an impact. But first of all, what exactly is an inspiration? For starters, it is a state that is markedly different from the everyday or ordinary emotional states we normally experience. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as: “The process that takes place when somebody sees or hears something that causes them to have exciting new ideas or makes them want to create something, especially in art, music or literature”. That’s an amazing thing to create in others, and here are a few ways to do it:

Have Confidence

You might think you have nothing inspiring to say. Perhaps your career or recent achievements aren’t what you wanted or expected. The truth is you can be an inspiration to others, no matter what you feel you have or have not achieved. Some of the most inspiring stories are those where people overcome difficulties, working their way towards their life or career goals. Having the confidence to share stories of failure as well as success can be enough to truly inspire and impact other people’s lives.

Sharing Uplifting or Encouraging Content on Social Media

People can’t be inspired unless they see what your fantastic and inspirational ideas and content are. The best way to make sure they see them is to share, share, share!! Social media is a wonderful platform where posts that provoke emotion tend to have the highest number of likes and are also the most likely to go viral. Inspirational posts are one of the best ways to ensure that people take the time to read and react to what you have to say.

Be More Vocal and Visual

When you are writing up an inspirational blog or open letter, you may have all your energies focused on perfecting the words and phrases you are using. The truth is, branching out and using different mediums can make your inspiring story far more impactful. We’ve all heard the common cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words”. While visuals shouldn’t be totally relied on to replace text, using different mediums together can work to strengthen your overall message. As well as looking for additional visuals, it is also worth exploring audio options and adding voice snippets to your message.

Share your platform

If you want your inspirational story or content to really have an impact, you should focus on listening as well as telling. The initial inspiration might come from you but take the time to listen to your readers. They undoubtedly have opinions and thoughts on your content that they are dying to share. It’s important to give them the right ways to respond whether through actively contributing to your blog or through a robust comments and reviews platform. The trick is to find the channel that works best for you and your branding.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

People may get to your blogs in different ways, but when they do get there you should make damn sure they can get to what they want without getting lost in the process. Categorizing content is a good way to stop users getting lost. With an easy to navigate menu, people interested in reading your blog can quickly hone into the content that is relevant for them.

Diversify your content

However great your writing is, there is a limit to the power of words. There is no better way to improve your blog than to diversify your content. This can start by adding powerful or striking visual images to support your writing but it can also include vlogs, voice comments and more. Scared of transitioning to a new type of media? Why not dip your toes in without committing by recording a 30-second clip that gives a summary of your blog without going the full mile and spending hours perfecting a full blog.

No man is an island, and no blog works in isolation. Before you put digital ink to blog paper, take the time to read other blogs and see what works and what doesn’t. Take a look at today’s top blogs (with a critical eye) and see what makes them truly great. And keep a close eye on hot topics. You never know when something relevant will come along that can spark your next great blog or a good idea.

Create a strong call to action

There’s no point focusing all your energy on you because at the end of the day a blog is a medium to hold a conversation. Your users are always an active not passive part of what you do and therefore it is very important to give them a space to air their thoughts, feelings, suggestions and more. It is very easy to integrate comments platforms into blogs and most come with in-built apps. Take the time to choose a comments platform that stands out from the crowd.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

Clickbait. We know it. We love it. We hate it. We nonetheless click on it. Anyone who has been online in the last decade is probably all too familiar with clickbait. The word itself is a pejorative term for content that is aimed at generating a quick buck without caring much about accuracy, quality or anything else. The key is to lure in the reader, usually with a sensational headline, and basically do anything at all to make sure that reader clicks.

Somehow clickbait has taken over the Internet. In 2016 it seems to be totally ubiquitous and almost impossible to escape. This is probably largely down to a journalistic change in incentives. Many online publications offer their writers payment that consists of a flat fee plus a commission per clicks. At its center this focuses on the heart of most online content today – keeping readers interested. The more clicks, the more people are interested, the more money can be generated. The problem is that clickbait has become something that panders to the lowest common denominator. It has moved very far away from journalistic morality and has shifted the focus of writing to trivia and nonsense rather than real news.

Apart from anything else, clickbait is incredibly irritating, yet it seems to have become the default language of the digital world. There are increasing ways of producing it and various strategies of getting precious clicks. These include cat GIFS, missing words in story headlines and never-ending quizzes. It’s actually hard to remember a time when an endless stream of clickbait didn’t exclusively define the online world.

But all of this might be changing. There is now a growing backlash against the clickbait culture. This movement has seen readers across platforms demanding a return to real reporting and a move away from trash stories designed only to manipulate users into clicking. The movement was mainly grassroots but now that seems to be changing too. Facebook has changed the face of clickbait by rolling out an anti-clickbait algorithm. With the anti-clickbait movement now working on a top-down and bottom-up basis, perhaps the face of journalism online really will be undergoing a transformation.

And if you want to do your part to move away from aggressive clickbait type advertising to more effective forms of connecting with your users there are some simple things you can do. For starters, you can use native advertising which is much less intrusive and organically refers users to adverts related to the content they are actually interested in. Another way of joining the anti-clickbait movement (albeit on a small scale) is to focus on generating quality content.

Now quality content is often too time-consuming or expensive to generate in the quantities that might be needed. However, there are a few helpful shortcuts. The main one is to shift away from brand generated content towards user-generated content. Not only is it less work intensive, it is also more authentic. In essence, it is the polar opposite of clickbait. And what can you do to start generating authentic high-quality user content? The answer is simple; find a fun and easy to use platform where your readers can comfortably share their thoughts questions and opinions on your website, business, product or service.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

The word ‘ambiguity’ comes from the Greek word ‘ambi’ which literally means two. The term originally referred to words or terms that had two or more meanings, but over time it has come to refer to a multiplicity of meanings or lack of singularity in expression. Of course, different languages have different degrees of ambiguity, and arguably Latin has the most, especially when it comes to nouns. But the English language is unquestionably full of a great deal of ambiguity too.

Ambiguous language is the source of a lot of great literature. Just think of Hamlet’s “to be or not to be”. If we knew exactly what he was talking about here, we probably wouldn’t have had decades of Shakespeare commentators work on volumes of different interpretations. In poetry, ambiguity can be surprising and delightful. Words work because they have other meanings, or suggest other things. However, in the online world, ambiguity can be very problematic.

If we break communication down into its basic element we find that it consists of three major components: body language, the tone of voice and the content of our words. When all three are used together, there is arguably greater clarity. If the words have a double meaning, the tone of voice can help us figure out if the meaning is ironic, happy or sad. Body language is another way for us to decode meaning. The actual meaning embedded in the words themselves makes up only 7% of the total meaning of anything we say. It’s a shockingly low number.

In the online world, the vast majority of what we say is conveyed in words alone. Even with the addition of static images there is a huge amount of ambiguity. Just think about dating profiles. How easy is it to figure out what someone means or what someone is like from only reading their words and seeing a few heavily photoshopped images? Without tone of voice and body language it becomes so much harder to read people.

Similarly, if you try responding to opinions online or start to have a conversation about anything, things can get messy pretty quickly. Now, obviously, there are a lot of online trolls or people who are angry and just looking to pick a fight. But, a lot of the misunderstandings found on online comments come down to the fact that they simply don’t understand each other’s meaning, because language is fundamentally ambiguous. And now add in the fact that a huge number of people are communicating in a language, which isn’t even their mother tongue.

So, language is ambiguous; it’s a fact. So, what can you do about it? Well, the good news is that while the web has been heavily reliant on text for a long time, other mediums help to reduce ambiguity and increase user engagement. Videos are the obvious way of doing this. In keeping with this, Facebook’s recent algorithm update heavily favors video content. But, if video comments sound a bit overwhelming, there are other things you can try.

A great way to reduce the ambiguity of user comments and reviews is to try a voice-based system. This way comments don’t drown out your original content but allow users to have a voice and express themselves in a way that takes both content and tone of voice into account. If you haven’t already, it’s time to explore voice-based comments and reviews platforms.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

Most business owners know how important data analytics are. Gathering customer data through website visits and through interactions like comments and reviews, allows business owners to generate the insights needed to ultimately improve their business, make better decisions and even altogether change their business model. For a long time, analytics has been primarily focused on text in the online arena, but that situation is rapidly changing.

Forbes has highlighted the growing importance of voice analytics. And as media becomes more diversified so do the insights and learning generated through analytics. So why should you pay attention to voice, and what exactly does voice analytics mean for your business? Until recently, the most advanced form of voice was arguably Apple’s Siri. It didn’t always work perfectly, but when it did, Siri was able to recognize and carry out commands like finding the perfect restaurant for a call or sending a text to friends or colleagues.

In 2013, PWC put together a report on the important of speech analytics for enhancing the customer experience (looking primarily at call centers and customer service solutions). The insights potentially unlocked by speech analytics were referred to as a “game-changer” for this arena. Speech analytics focused on the phonetics of words and in particular, were able to pick out specific key words for analysis. It’s a huge market and looks set to grow to $1.33 billion by 2019.

In contrast to speech analytics, voice analytics go far beyond customer service processes. In 2016, voice analysis technologies have developed much further than the ability to focus on phonetics or specific words. Voice analytics still focus on an analysis of spoken content but are able to study vocal elements such as syllable emphasis, tone, pitch, and tempo to analyze speaker behavior. This is absolutely crucial to better understand customers and generate higher quality insights. When we speak, only a small amount of meaning is conveyed through the words themselves while an enormous amount is conveyed through tone. The English language in particular is extremely ambiguous (which is one of the reasons why English language poetry and literature is so wonderful). However, in terms of generating customer insights, ambiguity is not very helpful and understanding tone of voice is an incredible and game-changing tool.

So if voice analytics are a relatively new and basically an invaluable tool in any website’s arsenal, how can you best leverage this tool to improve your business? As with all data analytics, the answer begins with collecting the data itself. The best way to do this is to set up a platform to collect voice content from your users. User-generated content like comments and reviews is one of the best areas to mine user data and now this can be done in voice.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

Everyone knows the importance of online reviews and the fact that they can easily make or break a business, whether you are a famous restaurant or hotel or just a small e-commerce platform selling your own unique fashion designs. And reviews aren’t just good at telling website visitors how good your business is, they can also increase search engines rankings and drive traffic to your site. And of course, they can help increase conversations, which is crucial for any e-commerce business.

Online reviews are the modern form of word of mouth, and studies show that 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And more than that, people who read reviews tend not to read the top review and move on, they actually read up to 10 full reviews on average. In an age in which the average attention span seems to be getting ever shorter, 10 is a huge amount. Ultimately, positive reviews create trust, and what all businesses strive towards is a level of trust that attracts more users and helps their users feel comfortable making purchases.

So it’s clearly a no-brainer when it comes to enabling customer reviews on your site. The problem is, somewhat ironically, that for a medium that aims to build trust review manipulation has become a major problem. In an effort to glean all the benefits of a great business with good reviews, many businesses are simply taking shortcuts and manufacturing reviews. There are now endless numbers of people and platforms offering to write free or cheap reviews for websites, products or services. Just take a look at Fiverr for one example. For just 5 dollars you can begin to receive fake reviews and optimize your site.

This might seem like a very pain-free form of manipulation, but the truth is, the stakes are high. Trust is a very delicate thing to create, especially between users and businesses, and it can be very easily broken. It is extremely hard to regain trust once it is gone. And while there is a huge market for fake reviews, people are beginning to take the issue seriously. In Britain for example, there is an investigation that will fine firms found to be acting illegally and even send CEOs to prison.

On the other side of things, many platforms offering product listings are wising up to the fact that manipulation is happening in their review arena. Amazon, for example, has a robust anti-manipulation policy and even threatens legal action and civil and criminal penalties for manipulation that is found to violate state or federal policies. Yelp goes further and has its own team of investigators that scour the site, making sure the content remains authentic.

For smaller businesses, large-scale legal threats or hiring teams of special “review investigators” might not be an option. Weeding out fake reviews is a double-sided process. On the one hand it means a business must commit to authenticity and refuse to generate fake reviews. On the other hand, every business needs a robust spam filter to weed out the bad reviews generated by bots and problematic users.

There is a lot of software out there that can do the second job. Some of the review platforms themselves have great in-built anti-spam abilities that can help prevent bots. It is definitely worth taking the time to find a great platform that can ensure the authenticity of your customer reviews. And it really is worth taking the authentic approach and building up a base of legitimate customer reviews rather than going for the quick-win and manipulating the odds.

Heyoya is a game-changing voice comments and reviews platform for websites that is proven to increase credibility through its unique Voice Authentication Service. With Heyoya, you can avoid spammers by identifying your users and keeping track of all comments and reviews. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization.

For more information about Heyoya, and to start weeding out spam, click here.

With so much focus and pressure on creating an online dialogue or conversation, it’s high time we took a look at the ingredients that come together to make a conversation great. Let’s start with basics; the official definition for a conversation is “an informal talk involving too people or a small group of people: the act of talking in an informal way”, the more extensive definition adds that conversation is ultimately an “oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas”. It’s clear from these definitions that there are a few key ingredients to create a conversation: people, content and some sort of exchange.

What to do in the real world

There is plenty of advice out there about how to improve real world conversations. In person-to-person conversations advice tends to focus on helping to improve or keep the flow of things. A great in-person conversation is one without two many awkward pauses.

Active listening is another way to improve conversations. And of course, when you interact face-to-face with another human, the vast majority of what you are saying comes through your body language and tone of voice. The actual words you speak makeup only a frighteningly tiny percentage of communication.

When things move online

When conversations move online, things look very different. For starters, the immediacy of things is a little (or a lot) muted. If you are taking via Facebook messenger or Whatsapp you certainly have more thinking time and less awkward pauses then you would in person. And if you are writing talkbacks or commenting on an article or blog, you can pretty much take all the time in the world to write out a coherent and interesting comment. So, the recipe for great online conversations is very different to those in the offline world. And, of course, going online takes away a huge amount of communication by cutting you off from body language and tone of voice. And so, when it comes to text, and online conversations things can get pretty vague and ambiguous.

Create a call-to-action

So how can you have a good conversation online? How can you inspire an interesting and meaningful debate about content? A great place to start is by adding a call-to-action to your blog or content piece. This can be something incredibly simple like one sentence that asks users to rate the blog and add their comment below. You can also go for a more controversial approach and ask for your reader’s opinions on contentious issues.

Pay attention and engage

Perhaps your users have started responding to your latest product or written their first response to your blog. Great! It’s time for you to pay close attention and get personally involved. It’s not enough to let your readers or users “talk amongst themselves”. Have a look at what they are saying. Are there problems with your products that you can address by engaging them in the conversation online? Are there great reviews you can thank your readers for? Perhaps someone has mentioned a point that your blog intentionally chose not to address – now is time to tell them why.

Make conversations as easy as possible

The real trick to having a good conversation either online or offline is for it to be as effortless as possible. However, engineering something to be effortless might seem daunting. Luckily when it comes to online conversations, it isn’t. Make things simple by choosing great comments and reviews platform for your readers. Or even better, forget restricting your readers to text, and try creating an online voice-based conversation.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.